
Class _EA^5L3S- 



Book___JS?Ma3 



CSPmiGnT DEPOsm 



PUBLISHED BY 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



A GARDEN ROSARY. 

THE HOUSE OF FRIENDSHIP. 

OUR COMMON ROAD. 



A GARDEN ROSARY 



A GARDEN 
ROSARY 



By Agnes Edwards ^ /• 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

Tbe Riverside Press 
1917 






COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published March iqiy 



m -4 1917 



g)P|.A.45780l 



TO MY MOTHER 

"THE ROSE OF ALL THE WORLD 

THIS BOOK IS MOST LOVINGLY 

DEDICATED 



" My mother went away from me — so wide 

and vast the plain ; 
My fire will soon be dying out, as stars at 

daybreak wane. 
Art thou not coming backy O love, to feed 

the fire again?'' 



A GARDEN ROSARY 







A GARDEN ROSARY 
April io 

never respect my neighbors so 
much as in the spring, when 
they emerge from their closed- 
up houses with a mystical glow of antici- 
pation on their faces, and begin furiously 
to hack at the soil in their hack or front or 
side yards. The fervor of creation is on 
them. In their minds is already spring- 
ing up a rapturous profusion of blossom. 
They see, as the artist sees, in that ''in- 
ward eye which is the bliss of solitude,'' 
the completed picture of their garden that 
is to be. 

Oh, you funny, fusty-looking woman 
— / have passed you a thousand times 
this winter on the village street, and 
thought how sour and how dull you were. 
And yet, all the time, blooming in your 
imagination was the little flower-plat 
you are setting forth so happily to dig. 



4 A GARDEN ROSARY 

And you — you gross and common 
money-grubber, whom I have scorned, as 
you sat heavily in the train to town, with 
your newspaper before your face, you, too, 
have been secretly cherishing your vision 
of fragrance, and flowing, swimming, 
swaying line. 

Across the street my neighbor has 
stepped forth from the dark doors of the 
rectory that have hidden her all winter, 
'and is walking across her lawn — the sun- 
light striking on her green velvet jacket. 
At a certain point she pauses, and indi- 
cates to the gardener the exact spot where 
the plants are to be placed. Kneeling, he 
plunges his fingers into the freshly turned 
earth. That humble attitude is, to my eye, 
not so much one of servility as of worship. 
On one's knees — what is a more fitting 
way to greet the season? 

Thus in the spring, we, like our fiowers, 
emerge from the rigid barriers that have 
confined us, and appear before each other 
in brief miraculous revelation, clothed in 
our rightful garments — the delicate drap- 
ery of our dreams. 



A GARDEN ROSARY 



April ii 

he crocuses are up, in a sudden 
bright thatch — although there 
is still snow on the ground. 
These perky little hlossomSy not confined 
by any marked bed, but starred all over 
the lawn and massed in a jostling crowd, 
always remind me of the small orna- 
mental flowers which Leonardo da Vinci 
loves to prick out in the thick grass under 
the feet of his inscrutable madonnas. 





A GARDEN ROSARY 



April 12 

ow delicately the snowdrops 
raise their pale heads on their 
meek, slender necks! One al- 
most wants to pat them — as one might 
a feeble child — and say, ''Dont bother, 
dear, to get up, just yet.'' 

*' For when a little flower beholds 
For the first time the snow, it wonders 
To see it white, so white; 
And the flower says: * The snow will never 
Do me a hurt — will never harm me. 
It is so white.' " 




A GARDEN ROSARY 



April 13 

very spring niy mother sends me 
over to a distant greenhouse to 
ask for a few of the Killarney 
rosebushes, which at this season^for some 
reason, they throw away. The hushes are 
prickly and brown and unwieldy, and 
even when they are wrapped in canvas 
make a difficult bundle to handle, giving 
no hint of the beauty that is enfolded 
within them. They always remind me of 
those little boxes of Japanese manufac- 
ture which contain a few closely packed 
dried pieces of wood. Drop them in water 
and they expand — and some of them 
even emit a subtle fragrance. Thus does 
man laughingly and audaciously imitate 
the mysteries of nature. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 



April 14 

! till planting — delightful toil! 
With soil-blackened hands I 

pause, and sit a moment in 
contemplation — my trowel in my lap. 
Surely one never fulfills his destiny of 
mirroring the image of the Creator more 
truly than in the spring. For — remem- 
ber — the Lord first made the Garden 
of Eden and then created man, giving 
him, as his prime obligation, — if we 
believe the Scripture, — ''to dress it and 
to keep it.'' Ah, blessed season, when we, 
even in this hurrying twentieth century, 
may enter into the labors and rewards of 
the first man, in the childhood of the 
world! 




A GARDEN ROSARY 



April 17 

ust like old ladies untwisting 
their curl-papers in fidgety 
haste to get off to a church socia- 
ble, so the hyacinths — as soon as spring 
is fairly started — shake out their cork- 
screw curls and hasten to appear upon 
the scene, spilling, in their agitation, a 
whole bottle of strong perfume down the 
front of their dresses. Stiff, for all their 
f us sines s, they dote on being in society: 
they are always among the first comers. 
But they lack the social gift. Who can 
gracefully introduce the hyacinth into a 
spring bouquet? 




lO A GARDEN ROSARY 



April 20 

he garden plots look more medi- 
ceval than ever. Is it the inten- 
sity of the scilla's blue — the 
strange lavender and violet of the crocus? 
What is it that makes these earliest spring- 
time flowers seem quite unlike any others? 
I think it is partly because they come so 
straight out of the ground, with so little 
foliage and branch and bush. There they 
are! — bright, decorative flecks on the very 
ground itself — in conventional primi- 
tive arrangement and color, like a lovingly 
conceived and quaintly wrought border 
of an Italian painting. 




A GARDEN ROSARY li 



May 7 

ne by one we have all emerged 
<from our wintry houses, and are 

living in our front yards, and 
chatting over our side walls. The flowers 
make a community of what was merely a 
street. And our little beds on either side 
the walk are quite as distinctive as their 
several owners. There is Miss W.'s de- 
mure and guileless plat, with prim little 
hyacinths and tidy pale English daisies 
— innocent and maidenly. Mrs. T. has 
a more exclusive assemblage. The high 
hedge hides them from the vulgar passer- 
by, and her scilla are bluer, her violets 
more shy and more intense, her primroses 
more luxuriant than any of ours. Mrs. 
M. has a row of velvet-eyed pansies, like 
meek little girls, or like naive little pup- 
pies, sitting, well trained and expectant, 
in the places they have been told to sit. Our 
tulips, hastily flung in at the last moment, 
have come up in a rush-and-tumble sort 



12 A GARDEN ROSARY 

oj way, like ladies pulling on their gloves 
as they hurry down the street. 

And over at Miss G.'s — the lilies of 
the valley shrink against the empty house 
and hide their heads in grief , because 
their mistress no longer comes , slowly, 
feebly, to the edge of the porch to look 
down at them with her fond, whimsical 
smile. 




a garden rosary i3 

May 15 

y mother sees to her spring 
\ planting in the vigorous fashion 
I of a woman thoroughly accus- 
tomed to this part of the household regime. 
She looks over catalogues with a profes- 
sional air, and directs the various garden- 
ing operations, masterfully. I see her 
glance at my brooding solicitude and gin- 
gerly attempted experiments, with a smile 
half amused and wholly tender. I imagine 
that a practical gardener regards the sen- 
timentalities of a novice with something 
of the indulgence with which a grand- 
mother watches the upbringing of the 
second generation. I have often noticed 
that people, to whom flowers are not a 
luxury but an essential, do treat them in 
this matter-of-fact fashion. It savors of 
the difference between a wife's automatic 
efficient attentions and a sweetheart's 
fluttering caresses. 




14 A GARDEN ROSARY 

May 20 

here is something soulless about 
the columbine to me. It is ex- 
quisite: fragile and yet not 
weak. But in spite of its superlatively 
fine finish it makes no spiritual appeal. 
As I hold this daintily tinted, daintily 
fashioned blossom in my hand, and study 
its minute and perfect markings, I am 
reminded, curiously, of a little Japanese 
manservant we once had. Deft and agile, 
he was a jewel sparkling in that dismal 
ditch of incompetent service that muddies 
the background of every housekeeper' s 
life. But one day, trying to argue with 
him on some point of exceedingly simple 
morality, I was met by a face as amiable, 
as impassive, as the face of an ivory 
image. And it was not only the smiling, 
inscrutable countenance which I was 
powerless to change: it was not only that 
we slipped by each other in the lapses of 
his lingo: it was that I was clutching at 
and probing in vain to touch, a respon- 



A GARDEN ROSARY 15 

sive chord where there was none. I am per- 
fectly sure, now J that there was none, I 
could catch his interest: I could enlist his 
intelligence. He would he obedient, cour- 
teous, gay. But as for understanding, for 
the briefest instant, my point of view — 
impossible. He was as unmoral as a little 
hopping bird which may perch on your 
finger, but will never press against your 
heart; as angelically soulless as this frilled 
and fluted columbine which flutters in 
the breeze, but never, never abandons her- 
self to the elements. 




I6 A GARDEN ROSARY 



May 25 

ne quaffs the fragrance of the 
wallflower with something of 
the inquisitive satisfaction with 
which one quaffs a draught of old wine. 
There is even a similarity in the gesture. 
You do not sniff a wallflower casually as 
you might a rose: you taste its complex 
odor with a dignified curiosity and de- 
light. 

For some reason I can never smell this 
particular flower without being reminded 
of a morning spent in the Russian Cathe- 
dral in New York — that paradoxical 
transplantation of an Old-World exotic to 
our plain American soil. As I watched 
the mild, inscrutable faces of the long- 
haired, white-draped priests, maneuver- 
ing through the labyrinthine celebration: 
as I listened to the choir, their voices ris- 
ing and falling unaided by an organ, I 
was overcome by the ponderousness and 
intricacy of the institution. Such rituals 
are never the direct fruit of any one man's 



A GARDEN ROSARY 17 

invention. They are the composite re- 
sult of centuries of human aspiration and 
endeavor. Like an old tapestry — woven 
by one generation: worn, mended, and 
rewoven by succeeding generations: like a 
consummately fruity pudding, into which 
have been stirred half a hundred mysteri- 
ous ingredients, producing a whole un- 
like any of them, and yet incorporating 
even the slightest. 

Of course no institution is simple, and 
neither is any individual: all are '' sjiip- 
pets and waste of old ancestral leavings.'" 
And yet the sense of an elaborate spiritual 
network which came to me so vividly that 
morning always recurs when I inhale the 
rich, elusive aroma of the wallflower. 




l8 A GARDEN ROSARY 



June i 

h, the modesty^ the ineffable 
modesty of the lily of the valley 
as it hides among the leaves! 
As one slips one* s fingers down its slender 
stem and pulls it up and out from its 
smooth sheath, it hangs its head — not 
limply hut shyly, in exquisite diffidence. 
But have you ever noticed, when it is 
picked and placed, perhaps with scatter- 
ing violets and appropriate greenery in a 
crystal vase, how instantly that aura of 
virginity vanishes? It is just as dainty in 
its little frilled skirts, hut there is a sophis- 
tication in its laciness, an elahorate fanci- 
ness hoth in its spreading network of green 
and white and in its perfume, which, 
so delicate in the sweet out of doors, emits 
an artificial piquancy in the warmth of 
the house. Charming, hut no longer in the 
least timid, it ceases to he the Lucy of a 
Wordsworth idyll, and is the consciously 
chaste Madame de Mortsauf, that '' Lys 



A GARDEN ROSARY 19 

dans la Vallee'' too virtuous to he pure, 
consummately and eternally embalmed 
for the perusal of fervid and romantic 
youth. 




20 A GARDEN ROSARY 



June 20 

have been arranging flowers 
through the house: in shallow 
glass howls; in thin vases; in 
wide-mouthed pitchers; in rustic brown 
willow baskets. 

Is it a waste of time to spend several 
hours in such a fleeting task which will 
have to be done over again to-morrow? 
That isy perhaps, the idea of those people 
who drape artificial roses from their 
piano scarfs and set Japanese cherry- 
blossoms — cunningly made out of linen 
• — on their dining-room tables. They 
think if the touch of color which only a 
flower can give has been obtained in a 
room, that the effect might as well be pre- 
served. But the signiflcance of cut flowers 
is not merely that they brighten a dark 
corner or fill a void, but that they bear 
mute and eloquent evidence of fond and 
constant care. It is this sense of tender 
solicitude which pervades the room as 
much as the fragrance and grace of the 



A GARDEN ROSARY 21 

flower itself. An enameled face may he 
more perfect than a natural complexion, 
but to a person of refined vision the charm 
of the human countenance is in its mo- 
bility, its swiftly changing color, its ex- 
pressions which depend upon muscles 
too fine to he recognized, and a million 
living pores too small to he seen. The 
enamel masks all this: the spiritual mean- 
ing of the face is obliterated. So it is in a 
room decorated with artificial flowers. 



22 A GARDEN ROSARY 



June 26 




he first bluebell has rung its 
arrival! 




a garden rosary 23 

June 2^ 

hile my mother sits in the after- 
noon sun J Gegena is playing 
with the shadows of the birds 
that flit above her head from rose arch to 
rose pillar. Caressed out of all the sav- 
age instincts of cathood, this dainty beast 
does not even lift her eyes to the birds 
themselves. 

A gray kitten playing with the glancing 
shadow of a bird that mocks at her — here 
is a gentle degeneracy that might tempt 
the fantastic brush of Aubrey Beardsley^ 
or lure the pen of Hawthorne down the 
lines of his musing ''Sketch-Book,'' 




24 A GARDEN ROSARY 

June 28 

here are ten thousand swelling 
buds on the rosebushes, press- 
ing up against the house. 
Ramblers, climbers, trailers, — / almost 
gasp when I think of the impending pan- 
orama of color, and the flood of perfume, 
I feel myself a princess in a mysteriously 
beleaguered tower: a Brunhilde with the 
fire no power could retard creeping up 
around her: like the Sleeping Beauty, 
when the spell-born bushes began to climb 
higher, higher, higher — hedging her in, 
for a hundred years, with her dreams. 



A GARDEN ROSARY 25 



June 30 

he roses have hurst forth every- 
where at once, like a trium- 
phant army unfurling myriad 
banners to the sky, and sending up to 
heaven shouts of exaltation. The walls 
of the house have fallen at the vibration 
of this Joshua's band. Or — if one must 
be accurate, even when overwhelmed — 
completely disappeared behind the bloom 
and the foliage. 




26 



A GARDEN ROSARY 




July i 

ne corner of this garden is 
crowded with cahhagy red roses 
— full, solid, hard; struggling 
— like a too tightly corseted woman — to 
he beautiful. They make me feel as if I 
were in the foyer after a matinee, jammed 
with overfed, idle matrons. With their 
common perfume and their pur ply painted 
cheeks, they are good-looking enough, in 
their way. One even imagines that their 
husbands think them handsome. 



A GARDEN ROSARY 27 



July 2 

win yellow roses on the same 
stem, like little blonde, round- 
Jaced girls. They are so ab- 
surdly alike they are rather silly. I find 
myself smiling at them in amusement. 





28 A GARDEN ROSARY 



July 3 

ehind the lattice there has 
bloomed a large white rose — 
pure without pallor: faultless 
without tedium — the perfection of flower- 
hood, . . . 

It has rained, and going out to the 
white rose garden I found the queenly 
creature, bowed almost to the ground, her 
flowing robes drabbled by the dirt, I 
clipped her free, and without more ado 
bore her to the kitchen faucet and washed 
her off — for all the world like picking up 
a bewildered princess in a London slum 
and subjecting her to the strenuous puri- 
fication of a Salvation Army free bath. 
The soil floated off like a forgotten sin, 
leaving not a mar upon the snowy surface 
of those ample petals. Reverently I placed 
her in a crystal vase, where, like Sir Gala- 
had's saintly sister, — only that my rose 
is too sumptuously developed to be a maid, 
— she stands in serious contemplation, 
in the midst of the hush that her presence 
creates around her. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 29 



July 4 

/ is quite like a city street, this 
little garden of mine, with its 
unceasing floral procession. 
Look at this small wild rose, so hectic in 
its eagerness for life that it has thrown 
its little self wide open at the first whisper 
of the sun, thrusting up its tiny stamens 
eagerly. Now, like a Fantine of the streets, 
even while tripping along in the weakness 
of youth, it is shattered hy the exhaustion 
of old age. And there are the twin blonde 
sisters again, nodding in amiable unison. 
Although they have become frizzly headed 
spinsters, they are still absurdly identical. 
Only there is something pathetic in mid- 
die-aged blondness: in the trivial silliness 
of this old wives' tale. 



30 



A GARDEN ROSARY 




Julys 

he white rose — the Queen — 
is passing. She is drifting into 
dissolution as calmly as she 
ascended her throne — gently droppings 
one hy one, the insignia of her worldly 
reign. Each petal as it falls retains its 
untinged whiteness. There is no fading: 
no shriveling. One hy one the large per- 
fect hearts float to the ground — im- 
passive, marmoreal — unflecked hy any 
earthly decay. 



A GARDEN ROSARY 



31 




July 6 

ow dignified tall flowers are!' 
The campanula, the larkspur,, 
tall roses, and one madonna 
lily are clasped in the sweetest, straight-- 
est tangle — their heads bowing in the 
breeze. How much more impressive than 
the low pansy and the humble portulaca / 
One sees how the moral attributes — such 
as dignity — become inevitably associ-- 
ated with the obvious physical corollary. 
It was Aristotle who said that any object 
to be beautiful must have a certain mag- 
nitude. 




32 A GARDEN ROSARY 



July 7 

have been tying up the ramblers 
that climb all over the white 
balustrade of the porch. They 
look uncomfortable enough now, pulled 
snugly in, and their long trailers, that 
whipped untidily in the wind, neatly 
tucked behind the railing. But, as a 
schoolroom full of wriggling children, 
who slip and slide and turn incessantly in 
their seats, subside under the rule of a dis- 
ciplinarian, so my unruly ramblers will 
grow accustomed to this imposed restraint, 
and — in the end — thrive much better, 
with their disorder regulated in this 
fashion. . . . 

One of the twin blonde roses has fallen. 
Like a pair of old boarding-house asso- 
ciates who have lodged under the same 
roof, and sat beside each other at the same 
respectable although somewhat limited 
table, year after year, and now are rudely 
separated . . . and forever. To the tran- 
sients who come and go, this small tragedy 



A GARDEN ROSARY 33 

of bereavement is hardly perceptible. But 
there is something touching in mere faith- 
fulness. And Death, with his winnowing 
fan, is, even to mediocre existences, dig- 
nified. 

" I had two flowers. One is withered now; 
The other mourneth for her sister.'' 



34 



A GARDEN ROSARY 



July 8 

have sweet William in one's 
garden is like possessing a 
substantial loaf of fine white 
bread in the larder. So firm it is — so 
close and compact: so friendly and whole- 
somely satisfying. 





a garden rosary 35 

July 9 

ne thing that proves the high 
evolution oj flowers in the spirit- 
ual world, as well as in the 
physical, — if indeed, proof were needed^ 
— is their gayety. For gayety — so it 
seems to me — is one of the very last quaU 
ities to crown a creation. Animals are 
rarely gay, although often playful. One 
cannot picture savage folk with whimsi^ 
cality. The elemental natures are grim, 
Only with refinement of feeling may one 
acquire the light touch. 

But flowers are nearly always gay. 
Even the heavy-footed hollyhocks and the 
thick-stemmed petunias and the clumsy- 
stepping sunflower join the floral dance, 
and take their part in color and motion all 
their brief, bright lives. 

To me this laughing, fleeting joyous- 
ness is one of the fairest mediums through 
which divine Nature gleams upon mortal 
sight. This is one reason why my mother , 



36 A GARDEN ROSARY 

who has the same gayety that marks the 
blowing poppy or the mischievous morn- 
ing-glory, is to me the most delightful of 
all companions. 



a garden rosary 37 

July 

he canterbury bells, bluebells, 
and harebells, are climbing 
high, their white and blue cups 
turned upward toward the sun, like clus- 
ters of enchanted chimes, ringing a pcean, 
whose sweetness is not sound but fra- 
grance. 





38 a garden rosary 

July io 

found a tiny nasturtium this 
morning — precisely and per- 
[fectly formed, and gay ly color ed, 
but about one third normal size. Oddly 
enough, this sprightly dwarf did not seem 
in the least like a nasturtium which had 
been stunted, but resembled another flower 
altogether — like one of those curious di- 
minutive people we see sometimes, dressed 
like an adult but like a child in height, 
and yet seeming neither man nor boy, but 
a totally different species. How odd it is 
that mere size can so utterly alter a human 
or a floral personality ! Perhaps this dis- 
tinction, which we have been accustomed 
to think of as entirely superficial, is not 
so superficial after all. Perhaps it has 
more to do with the difference between a 
miniature and a life-sized painting, be- 
tween the effect of a massive tome and 
a slender volume, than either poets or 
painters would like to have us believe. 




a garden rosary 39 

July ii 

sometimes think that flowers 
show their refinement nowhere 
more artistically than in the 
way they take their departure. They lin- 
ger a moment after they have murmured 
adieu, and then — they are gone, relin- 
quishing as obediently as they accepted 
their brief part on Nature's revolving 
panorama. And below our surface regret 
is an undercurrent of relief that these 
most delicate friends never stay long 
enough to become commonplace: never 
commit that most grievous sin against 
idealism — the sin of excess: never press 
upon our greedy palates the juice of thai 
most fatal fruit — ^'loves sad satiety.'' 



40 



A GARDEN ROSARY 




July 13 

ust as in music it is not merely 
the melody that appeals to the 
listening ear, hut the harmony 
and counter pointy so in the garden it is 
not merely the perfume and the color 
that constitute the entire charm. It is the 
texture and the form of the foliage: the 
polished surface of rose-leaves: the tender 
suede of summer cypress: the bronze of 
the snapdragon leaf. It is the handsome 
stalks of the unflowered phlox: and the 
sword-like curve of Japanese iris, and the 
flag. There is a sculpturesque quality in 
flowers which we sometimes miss — 
blinded by the flash of their painted bloom. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 41 

July 14 

he larkspur — intensely blue — 
gleams vividly against the sky. 
The lighter -colored spurs look 
faded in the sunlight. But after I bring 
them to the house and place them in a 
spreading earthen bowl, the bright blue 
seems almost too heavy, while the paler 
shade is celestially bright. Now one sees 
the practical application of the old prin- 
ciple of Egyptian art: those strong or- 
anges and browns which decorated the 
exteriors of temples and tombs, were quite 
suitable to the dazzling sunlight in which 
they were seen and for which they were 
designed. These same colors confined to 
a vase or a strip of embroidery , and placed 
in a modern drawing-room clash and tear 
at everything else. 




42 A GARDEN ROSARY 



July 15 

t has been stiflingly hot and 
damp and this, combined with a 
day or two of enforced neglect on 
my part, has affected the cut flowers in the 
house with symptoms like those of a me- 
diceval plague. A sticky mould attacked 
them, as they sagged upon their rotting 
stems. I found them with their petals 
fallen: the water stale: the vases soiled; and 
my swift remedying of the situation seemed 
to find a gruesome parallel in the offices 
of the driver of the ancient dead cart^ col- 
lecting the corrupted remains of what had 
once been fair ladies and brave gallants. 
Oh, the horror of earthly mortality on the 
face of beauty I My flowers were dead of 
the plague — a loathsome plague — and /, 
their one-time lover, and their now-by- 
necessity burial-master, gathered up the 
sad decay with morbid feelings of horror 
and grief. As I disposed of them, the old 



A GARDEN ROSARY 43 

Spanish soleares beat again and again 
in my ears: — 

Yestereven 
The dead cart passed me nigh — 
A hand hung out uncovered — 
/ knew her again, thereby. 



44 A GARDEN ROSARY 



July i6 

n ordinary turtle — thick-set 
and heavy, with striped legs 
and armored head — has found 
his way to my garden, and there he sliig- 
gishly spraddles in the foreground — 
a touch of Bakst color — a grotesque, 
quaint form among those heavenly stalks. 





a garden rosary 45 

July 17 

omewhere there is a tradition 
that the word '' Mesopotamia y'' 
repeated and repeated and re- 
peated, will hypnotize both speaker and 
listener. I remember how this notion en- 
snared my childish fancy , and once, when 
I felt very brave, I whispered it over and 
over, under my breath, — ''Mesopota- 
mia — Mesopotamia'' nodding, nodding, 
as I said it. I cannot be sure that the state 
superinduced by this performance was of 
hypnotic nature. But it might well have 
been. Without doubt there are certain 
words which work upon our imaginations , 
merely because of their arrangement of syl- 
lables, not at all for their intrinsic mean- 
ing: just as there are certain colors which 
are symbolic without any chart to interpret 
them. There is a peculiar beauty and sig- 
nificance to line, irrespective of the thing 
which it represents. Even to the layman 
vertical lines express stability; horizontal 
lines, repose. Curved lines are the lines 



46 A GARDEN ROSARY 

of motion, and the curves differ within 
themselves: some are soft, others are resil- 
ient. 

So, when I look upon the flat, shallow, 
entrancing bell of the campanula persici- 
folia, I find myself gently hypnotized, — 
borne out of this mundane consciousness 
— gazing — gazing 

" till I become, 
In soul with what I gaze on, wed'' 

I do not know whether it is the ineffable 
blue of this flower which stuns me into 
such sweet ecstasy. I think it is some- 
thing more poignant than color alone. It 
is the form — that delicate flare, more 
mystical than star shape, more elusive 
than the heavier canterbury bell. 

In some countries, I have heard, these 
campanulas grow wild and abundantly. 
I wonder if that country has not a spirit- 
ual haze above it, when the blue flowers 
spread their faint fair petals to the sun 




A GARDEN ROSARY 47 

July i8 

ertain spiky flowers develop like 
certain spiky natures — un- 
evenly. Take the snapdragon, 
for instance. The blossoms have already 
fallen at the base of the stalk before the 
tip is in bloom. When it is young it has 
a long string of immature buds to top it: 
when it is fullblown it has dead seed 
pods to detract from it. Even the mignon- 
ette does this, and the balsam, and the 
foxglove. The larkspur alone is clever. It 
creeps up its long spike and maintains 
its charm all the way. And when one seed 
pod stands bare it can be clipped off, and 
the last new blossom looks as if it were 
the first. It is like the Parisienne who 
can perform her entire toilet so deftly 
that 'she is alluring in every stage and 
process. But most spiky flowers are like 
poorly furnished houses which have not 
quite enough furniture for completeness. 
If you take the mat for the parlor, the 
hall is bare: if you move enough chairs to 
the dining-room, you have to stand up in 
the library. 




48 A GARDEN ROSARY 

July 19 

alking through ones garden is 
like passing down the aisle of 
the village church, where one 
knows every one with the superficial 
knowledge of long familiarity. 

The petunia, for instance: it does not 
take much penetration to see in her the 
floppy -hatted village belle, with a weaky 
pretty face, and unaristocratic hands and 
feet. 

The scarlet salvia is a shrewd, shrill- 
voiced termagant, who can — in fits of 
rage — scream so that the neighbors hear 
her a mile away. She has a kind of good 
looks, however, — carmine lips, sparkling 
eyes, and a lively carriage, — legitimate 
expressions of a certain quick magnetism. 
One cannot wholly dislike her, in spite 
of her bad temper. 

The cineraria, like a caricature of a 
flower, cut out of tin, reminds me of one 
of those dumb, forbidding dowagers, who 
carry on the tradition of a respected fam- 



A GARDEN ROSARY 49 

ily. She is always as well dressed as if 
she were going to a funeral. Although she 
never attracts any intimate advances , yet, 
both because of her own composure and 
her suggestion of worthy heritage, she is 
granted a dignified if dtdl position in 
the social register. 

The sunflower, with its gentle, giant-like 
qualities of largeness and simplicity, is 
surely a ''correspondent'' — as the Swed- 
enborgians might say — to the open- 
faced, good-natured village yokel: a clum- 
sy lout, and yet deemed a worthy object 
for the art of a Millet. 

Love-in-a-mist is rather pathetic. I 
think she is a sentimental, shadowy old 
maid, hiding the lack of vital experience 
in her life behind a veil of harmless in- 
nuendoes. 

Obviously the dianthus, with its spicy 
tang, is a buxom, wholesome young 
matron, while the salpiglossis, although 
extremely ladylike, is not, to the sensitive 
eye, really a lady. 

But it is the zinnia which invokes the 
most trenchant musings. Stiff and plain 



50 A GARDEN ROSARY 

and unyielding, you recognize in her 
something of the fiber of the homely, un- 
compromising country woman who does 
her duty with zeal and carries herself with 
uprightness. In her pristine state she 
commands respect, hut rarely romantic 
affection. But — have you ever looked 
upon the stained-glass windows of some 
little church and seen depicted there the 
face and figure of an austere saint ? The 
flat contours, the angular outlines, — 
these only enhance the symbolism of the 
rose, the gold, and the green. So, to me, 
the zinnia has the potentialities of state- 
liness and the rich color of an infinitely 
finer fiower, just as the uncompromising 
country woman not infrequently attains, 
to those who understand, something of the 
sublime beauty of a stained-glass saint. 




a garden rosary 51 

July 20 

think the gaillardia, like the 
\ flower on a patchwork quilt y 
with yellow calico petals and 
a brown merino center, was made hy a 
country cousin oj Dame Nature. I even 
fancy it was done during one of those par- 
ticularly depressing winter seasons; as 
when, her desire for cheerfulness distorted 
hy the long-continued cheerlessness of her 
environment, the energetic housekeeper 
sits down hy the side of a kerosene lamp, 
and, with the aid of a five-cent needle- 
work periodical, works out a laborious 
atrocity. 



52 A GARDEN ROSARY 

July 21 

he Evangeline rose has bloomed. 
It is as if a border on the daint- 
iest of wall-papers had been 
unrolled. 





A GARDEN ROSARY 53 

July 22 

have been reading a very in- 
genious hook entitled '' The 
Human side of Plants,'' in 
which the writer describes with a good deal 
of vividness many of the peculiar habits 
of plants, — such as the power to mimic, 
the response to light and heat, the at- 
tracting of pollen-bearers and food mes- 
sengers, etc., — using these facts to build 
up his theory that the botanical world, 
which we are accustomed to consider in- 
sensate, has inclinations and aversions 
similar to those of the animal world. 
Whether Mr. Dixon's statements are en- 
tirely authentic, I do not know. But even 
if his statistics are true, I, for one, fail to 
find' any inspiration from the arguments 
that plants struggle, suffer, bargain, de- 
liberately adapt themselves to circum- 
stances, and plan for the future as does — 
perforce — the steaming mass of human- 
ity. To me the supreme restfulness of 
companionship with this part of the great 



54 A GARDEN ROSARY 

natural jamily is precisely because it 
seems to have a different consciousness; 
a different connection with nature; a dif- 
ferent spiritual sense. 

Insects, stones y trees, ponds, clouds, 
and men have their period of inchoate 
existence, their time of fullest develop- 
ment, and their time of decay. That they 
individually realize this unfolding of 
existence may or may not he. But even 
if they are conscious, why conclude that 
it is with the kind of consciousness char- 
acteristic of man? It seems more ra- 
tional and beautiful to believe that the 
varying forms of Nature commune with 
her according to their various capacities. 
Would not a violet with the hopes of a 
maiden be as grotesque as a stone with 
the desires of an ox ? Or does it bring any 
of them nearer, to fancy them all swayed 
by the instinct of mankind ? 

The birth of a flower is painless; its 
development unattended by ills; its mat- 
ing sure; its separation from its matured 
offspring without regret. Does it enhance 
the meaning of life to imagine that the 



A GARDEN ROSARY 55 

dandelion, sending its babies flying out 
into the world, experiences the unutterable 
grief of the human mother at the depart- 
ure of her children ? 

Ah, no! those to whom a flower garden 
brings the greatest solace will find no 
meaning in the assurance that these aloof 
and lovely friends are subject to the sad 
repetition of ambitions, despairs, pas- 
sions, that our too tightly strung mental- 
ity is heir to. They live, they breathe; they 
have their being; but, oh, how differently 
from us ! Unhampered by the cumbersome 
processes of emotion and logic and self- 
will, they happily commune with God 
according to the harmony of their nature 
— not according to the nature of the chafed 
and wistful mortal who so yearningly 
surveys them. 




56 a garden rosary 

July 2^ 

veil has fallen between me and 
my garden: my own mood has 
risen like a blank y impenetra- 
ble mist between me and the flowers. In 
vain I clip and tend and pluck. They tell 
me nothing. For the way of communica- 
tion between the human world and the 
world of nature is over the slenderest of 
bridges, and only when one is in a psychic 
mood will ones feet fi?id and keep the 
swaying way across. Always men are try- 
ing to analyze the exact number and fiber of 
links that bind — or separate — the min- 
eral from the vegetable; the vegetable from 
the animal; the animal from the human; 
the human from the divine. Elaborately 
armed with science they manage every 
year or so to push back some of the old 
theories and construct new ones — to be, 
in their turn, destroyed. It is possible that 
science may, indeed, reduce and tabulate 
all forms of matter into their elements. 
But possibly, too, the scientific power is 



A GARDEN ROSARY 57 

not so direct nor any more true than the 
psychic. Children, and nations in the 
time of their childhood y converse with 
trees and stones and stars without a con- 
scious sense of harrier. The fairy story 
that tells of the speaking flower or the 
moral fish finds no incredulity on the part 
of children . For them the bridges of under- 
standing span out in every direction, and 
they run across without thought of won- 
der. But in the press of life, our bridges 
break: only one or two are left — as frail 
as a spider s thread. And when the heavy 
mists of earthly thought bear down upon 
us, even these are obscured, and we are 
isolated in the sad, restricted company 
of our own kind and species. 

When 07ies eyes are dulled with hu- 
man tears, and one's brain is clogged with 
worldly perplexities, one may not enter 
into communion with a flower. 




58 a garden rosary 

July 28 

he lemon verbena is like one of 
those rare and inconspicuous 
women whose life is made up 
of continual and silent, willing sacrifice. 
Break a spray and it thrusts out another 
even more fragrant. Crush the leaves 
between your fingers and a heavenly per- 
fume is your only rebuff. It lives by giv- 
ing. There is no effect of tragic despolia- 
tion as when one cuts a rose, which is the 
sole consummation of many weeks of 
growth. Neither is there any of that nig- 
gardly drawing back — as with the sweet 
peas, which never give you as long a stem 
after the first few cuttings. Neither is 
it the selfish renewal of the impatiens 
which pops into blossom again as soon 
as one flower falls, because it cannot bear 
to be unarrayed. No — there is some- 
thing of almost spiritual beauty in the 
loving renewal of the verbena, perpetually 
adding its quiet, ineffable contribution to 
the charm of the garden bouquet. 



a garden rosary 59 

July 

he whiteness of phlox: snowy, 
thick; neither ghastly nor wax- 
en; neither creamy nor pallid; 
hut white — whiter than a wind-blown 
cloud; whiter than a swan's neck, or sun- 
dried linen. Gazing at this gracefully 
shaped and intensely colorless blossom, 
I am utterly silenced. 





6o A GARDEN ROSARY 



July 30 

he dahlias have come too soon; 

like clumping, important guests 
- tremendously well dressed, 
hut taking up more room than is — at 
this special moment — provided for them. 
Their velvet robes crowd the space I had 
reserved for the dainty, muslined-f rocked 
sabbatia. I was giving a little afternoon 
tea, and here the dahlias have come and 
turned it into a sort of regal reception. 
Now I must race around and procure 
proper accommodations for them, in the 
way of vases and jugs and pitchers. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 6l 



August i 

\frican marigolds they call them, 
these brilliant pomponed crea- 
tures, atop of their erect stalks j 
silhouetted in hold outline, and with stac- 
cato spring against the sky. I do not know 
whether they grow in Africa; I associate 
them with the small dooryards of Cape Cod 
cottages. But certainly there is something 
about them which always recalls to me a 
brief and vivid picture of that other land. 
When I see these tall, flashing blossoms 
I am reminded — why, I cannot tell — 
of a morning when my mother and I leaned 
over our courtyard railing in Biskra. At- 
tired in gorgeous colors, with magnifi- 
cent headdresses and vivid burnouses, the 
Arab soldiers of France gathered in the 
white piazza of the town. A host of them, 
bright and silent — wonderfully straight 
upon their perfect steeds. Hypnotized by 
the kaleidoscope of color, I leaned my 
chin in my hand and watched them as — 
inspired by some Oriental rhythm — they 
galloped down the dazzling street. 




62 A GARDEN ROSARY 



August 4 

here has been a terrific three 
days' gale, and my flowers are 
prone upon the earth — tossed , 
torny and beaten. The pink hollyhocks ^ 
that stood in such stately graciousness in 
the corner of the house, are bent prostrate 
to the ground: the bachelor s buttons have 
turned up their coat collars and are shiver- 
ing away from the wind. The meek little 
faces of the impatiens are discolored by 
the bitter smiting, and every now and then 
a flat poppy falls — face downward — 
on the drenched grass. The snapdragons 
are utterly demoralized — / don't see how 
they can ever recover — and the sweet 
peas are stained with weeping. But it is 
the hollyhocks that fill me with keenest 
grief. One tall creature is broken sharply 
in two, and hangs there mutely, like a 
high-born lady overwhelmed by misfor- 
tune: a bruised reed that has, contrary to 
the kind assurances of Scripture, been most 
cruelly broken. Of course the calendulas 



A GARDEN ROSARY 63 

— sturdy peasants — did nt mind it a hit. 
But the wee eschscholtzias have shut their 
eyes in anguish. 




64 A GARDEN ROSARY 



August 5 

his morning I have been " bind- 
ing up the broken-hearted'' 
and setting at liberty ''them 
that are bruised.'' One lissom pink holly- 
hock will never recover, but I have brought 
her to end her days in a tall glass vase 
in the shelter of the gray -paneled parlor. 
A beautiful lady, stricken down by a mor- 
tal disease, but still smiling bravely, she 
stands erect — one third her once glorious 
height. I have brought in the impatiens 
and it is thrusting out new little blossoms 
as soon as it possibly can. It recovers 
quickly. The snapdragons are sullenly 
sodden. They lie sulkily on the ground 
and drop their petals in the most dis- 
gruntled way. The balsam, under its 
thick and shining thatch, hardly seems to 
know that anything has happened. The 
poppies refuse to open their eyes, al- 
though it is ten o'clock in the morning. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 65 



August 6 

/ is only to man that the ap- 
proaches of old age are ab- 
horrent. The advancing years 
bring no alarm^ no apprehension to the 
simpler, more vital children of Nature. An 
oak is not majestic until it is venerable: 
a rosebush is a scraggly-looking affair 
the first year or so. And how magnificent 
is even the common trumpet vine, when, 
antique and powerful, it clambers over the 
roof of a country cottage, dominating 
everything — and, in its inexorable grip 
upon life, even destroying the very roof 
which sustains it ! It reminds one of some 
ifidomitable patriarch who imposes the 
rigor of his rule upon the younger gener- 
ation. Iniquitous, perhaps, from a strict- 
ly ethical standard, but — dramatically 
superb! 

Perhaps the time will come when — 
with finer senses — we will regard a gray- 
beard with respect and admiration simply 
because he is hoary: when we will not 



66 A GARDEN ROSARY 

have to wait for a Rembrandt to inter- 
pret the strength which is the fruit of 
struggle and the repose which only fol- 
lows conflict. And that exquisite fragility 
which enfolds certain very, very old ladies, 
like the exquisite withering that creeps 
up through the thin petals of a Killar- 
ney rose — this almost terrifying deli- 
cacy which is as evanescently charming 
as the flush of youth — when shall we 
hurrying mortals find time to pause before 
it, and to bow instinctively in its presence 
as to the faint fragrance of incense in an 
ancient church? 




A GARDEN ROSARY 67 



August 7 

his morning, as I was working 
in my little garden enclosure, 
I heard sounds of merrymak- 
ing in the lower meadow, and looking over 
the white lattice, I saw my mother, as I 
have seen her so many August times, in 
the hay field with the men, laughing and 
talking with animation as she raked the 
fragrant windrows. There are many 
women, like myself, who like to tinker 
with a small garden plat; hut there are 
few, perhaps, who so vividly appreciate 
all Nature as a garden. To my mother 
a field or hog, a sandy hill or a tangled 
thatch of underhrush, each presents a 
delightful and intimate prohlem of culti- 
vation: and she is never so characteris- 
tically herself as when she is actually 
laboring with her two hands — such 
pretty lady-hands that look shockingly 
out of place wielding a rake or a hoe — 
and, as she works, instructing and en- 
couraging whatever miscellaneous assis- 



68 A GARDEN ROSARY 

tants she may assemble in this hillside 
country. 

As I watch her this morning, I imag- 
ine that I see a return of that unquench- 
able buoyancy that has always distin- 
guished her. YeSy she is more like her old 
masterful self than she has been for a long, 
long time. And yet — ah, now at this 
moment, as she pauses and rests her chin 
upon the wooden rake, a little wearily, I 
see with a pang that little droop which 
has crept gradually upon her of late. 
Like the grass itself, — so resilient as it 
meets the buffets of the gale, and so gay 
under the smiting of the sun, — / have 
always noticed her kinship with the ele- 
mental children of Nature. Now, as I 
stand here, looking down into the lower 
meadow, a solemn rhythm beats unac- 
countably in my ears. 

''All flesh is as grass — all flesh is as 
grass, — and all the glory of man is as the 
flower of grass. The grass wither eth and 
the flower thereof falleth away — the grass 
wither eth and the flower fadeth — but the 
Word of the Lord endureth forever.'' 




A GARDEN ROSARY 69 



August 8 

^y little flowers in the latticed 
\ window-how remind me of well- 
trained children corralled be- 
hind the bars of an ingenious nursery pen; 
of birds caged up; of bedridden folk who 
smile cheerfully from their open windows 
at the passers-by on the street. They flour- 
ish well — these pots of impatiens, agera- 
tum, lantana, and geranium — although 
the ageratum, like a consumptive invalid 
in a pale-blue wrapper, is visibly wasting 
away. But to have one's roots confined by 
a pot; to be arbitrarily lifted above the 
friendly level of the earth — well, though 
one may bloom obediently, still, one has 
memories — and possibly hopes — of a 
dwelling more normal and less conspicu- 
ous: lowlier and more intimate. 



70 A GARDEN ROSARY 



August 9 

have woven a ridiculous sort 
of trellis of raffia from the win- 
dow-box outside my bedroom 
in the old windmill. And up it the morn- 
ing-glories are merrily creeping. Now I 
may lie in bed, and in the morning these 
living trumpets will unfurl and blare forth 
— in vibrations too delicate to be caught 
by mortal sense — their salutation to the 
dawn. 





A GARDEN ROSARY 71 



August io 

lured my mother forth to gather 
mushrooms with me this morn- 
ing. We started out, across 
the dewy fields, each with a basket swing- 
ing from her arm. Over the rolling Cape 
meadows — under the weather-beaten 
fences, through ancient stiles — along 
faintly worn footpaths which connect 
one pasture with another. But it was not 
until we came to the old hillside by the 
pond, back of Rosemerry, that we achieved 
our quest. And here we came upon a host 
— in fairy rings and circles — in mysti- 
cal groups and scattering numbers — hun- 
dreds and hundreds of them, pushing their 
way up through the dry, sandy soil into 
the smiling light of day. 

What is there so weird, so other-worldly 
about these singular fungi? Like the 
ghost-white yucca and the ominous In- 
dian pipe that blackens in profane fingers ^ 
they hauntingly suggest what might grow 
in the gardens of the moon. Even their 



•^2 A GARDEN ROSARY 

texture, slippery and yet subtly rough, 
and their inexplicable coolness, like the 
touch of a spectre. . . . 

There were tight, hard, little ones, like 
twinkling, white buds; tan, flat ones, glim- 
mering close to the ground; darkened, 
older ones withering, decaying; well- 
developed ones — fully grown yet still 
pink and firm, market size; and some, 
too, of those seemingly goodly ones ''rot- 
ten at the core'' with the worms of mor- 
tality secretly feeding upon their hearts. 
The same inevitable, irrevocable proces- 
sion of youth, maturity, and decay that 
makes up our whole concept of life ! Only 
these with their blank pallor and clammy 
smoothness were indefinably different — 
reversed, in some impalpable way — as in 
a looking-glass — whose apparently true 
reflection sucks out all warmth from the 
living image. As we bent down to pluck 
them, we, too, seemed detached, unreal 
to one another — like phantoms, gather- 
ing strange fruit in the gardens of the 
moon. 



A GARDEN ROSARY 73 



August ii 

Ithough I have been watching^ 
like an uneasy lover, for days 
at the thatched eaves of the bal- 
sam, yet this morning it was my mother 
who discovered the shy, soft face below 
the greenery. And together we welcomed 
this dear blossom, so modestly enfolded 
in her bonnet and shawl of pink. 




74 a garden rosary 

August 12 

he tall red tiger lilies, smartly 
dotted with black and with their 
petals crisply turned hack, arrest 
attention, hut do not draw affection. They 
give me the same vague sense of distrust 
that used to creep through my veins when 
— in my extreme youth — reading a 
French novel that I did not understand, 
the tawny-haired siren insinuated herself 
into the plot of the story. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 75 



August 13 

till clipping away the old and 
the dead to give the striving 
^and youthful ones their place 
in the sun. 





76 A GARDEN ROSARY 



August 14 

ome day, ivhen my nature has 
reveled to satiety among the 
brilliance and scent of gardens y 
I shall seek an entrance into the quiet 
dun-costumed sisterhood of grasses and 
mosses. Leaving the gay foyer of painted 
beauties I shall pitch my senses to a subtler 
key, and knock gently upon the humble 
door of wild weed, sedge, and fern. The 
taste for etchings comes after the taste for 
paintings. Refined by the grinding of ex- 
perience, I shall grow to appreciate the 
quiet grace of these slender forms — as a 
voluptuary, turning from a ballroom, 
might pause, hushed, before the passing 
of a decorous file of charity children, with 
meek, pure faces, and humble cloaks and 
hoods. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 77 



August 15 

[here has been a warm rain, and 
puffballs are growing by the 
path to the mill. With the aid 
of half a dozen stakes and some string I 
have built a little fence around them, to 
protect them from any casual foot passen- 
ger, and there they stand, '' swelli7ig wis- 
ibly'' like chubby, phlegmatic children, 
fattening on prepared food and penned 
up in a warm nursery. There is some- 
thing almost uncanny in the way they ex- 
pand — almost doubling their size in 
twenty -four hours. And yet it is more droll 
than uncanny. For no matter how huge 
they grow they never lose their infantile 
irregularities of shape — like a fat boy, 
who at forty still looks like a fat boy. 
One would think that his moon features 
would be the first to change and contract: 
but they maintain their peculiar shape- 
lessness more unyieldingly than many a 
sharply chiseled physiognomy. So these 
funny, solid, white puffballs, always 



78 A GARDEN ROSARY 

exuding a faint chill perspiration, dilate 
from small nubbins to great, watermelon 
things, as big as one's head. Even when 
they are sliced and fried in deep fat to a 
most delectable brown, one still recognizes 
those bland, full contours. Even cut and 
poised upon a fork they wink at you bulb- 
ously. Oh, the stupidity of mere tenacity f 
And yet to many people it is the supremest 
virtue I 



A GARDEN ROSARY 79 



August i6 

he puniness of animal life! 
How these Hessian hugs resist 
and wrestle and kick as I pick 
them off the calendulas! How trivial 
and yet how supreme their final struggle 
against me — a superior power. 





8o A GARDEN ROSARY 



August i8 

happened to he passing hack of 
the little shack on the hill to- 
day, and I found a great com- 
motion. The flowers which I have thrown 
there from time to time were swarming 
turhulently all over the place , quarreling 
and laughing, like servants dismissed 
from duty in the master's rooms, and 
quartered in their own hall. 

The golden glow had grown too rank 
for any use. The mornijig- glory was 
hugging a rosehush in a playful, yet ma- 
licious grip. The rose had flung off her 
two extra leaves ^ and reverted to wildness. 
The trumpet vine had jumped up on the 
roof, and, like a naughty hoy, was tug- 
ghtg at the shingles. Even the mild-faced 
clematis, who has always heen such a dig- 
nified matron with white apron and cap, 
was indulging in intimate conversation 
with a vulgar wild carrot, that had had the 
audacity to push its way in. All was con- 
fusion and uproar and mishehavior. The 



A GARDEN ROSARY 8l 

privet, whom I had always seen a high and 
haughty footman at the front door, was 
ensnared into a flirtation with a French 
maid — in the form of a scarlet bean, 
who was slowly squeezing him to death, 
while coquettishly tickling him. The 
grass grew three feet high — untidy and 
riotous — and a few poppies, that should 
have been tending to business in my 
lady's chamber, were dancing together, 
hilariously. 

Like a housekeeper who has emerged 
from her own well-ordered apartments 
and stumbled inadvertently upon a secret 
revel belowstairs, I hastily withdrew. Im- 
possible to get them in order, the wisest 
course seemed to be to ignore the whole 
affair. To-morrow, when I enter by the 
front door instead of by the back, I shall 
see the trumpet vine industriously clutch- 
ing at the lattice provided for him by the 
entrance gate; the rose will be meekly sub- 
mitting to her engrafting in the garden; 
and on the side porch the clematis will 
appear serenely — as if she had never 
consorted with jaunty, ill-bred weeds. 



82 A GARDEN ROSARY 

When I see the privet standing stiffly by 
the wall, and the morning-glory hastily 
departing out of the bed — / shall pretend 
that I never caught them at their carousal 
back of the shed. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 83 



August 19 

he woman who has a hireling 
tend her beds, while she merely 
sallies forth with a picturesque 
basket and culls a few of the choicest blooms 
for table decoration, misses that intimacy 
with her garden that comes to those who 
dig and delve with their own fingers and on 
their knees. It is like having an excellent 
governess for your children. She takes en- 
tire charge of them, and permits you to 
see them every afternoon, when they are 
properly bathed and dressed, and ready for 
a polite romp. Well-behaved children are 
certainly delightful, as are fresh flowers 
cut and placed in appropriate vases. But 
there is an indescribable nearness of 
knowledge that comes from bathing a 
child, cutting its finger nails, brushing 
its teeth, combing out its hair as fine as 
floss, and pushing its funny little feet 
into shoes that never seem made to hold 
them. 

So it is with a garden, when one has 



84 A GARDEN ROSARY 

planted each seed with loving anticipa- 
tion, welcomed its first appearance, wa- 
tered, weeded, and tilled around its roots; 
and finally, with triumph, cut the flower 
and laid it upon the lap of the one we 
love the best. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 8=> 



August 20 

would as lief spend a morning 
at the sewing-circle of a sub- 
urban town as associate to any 
extent with the cosmos. It is an exceed- 
ingly nice flower: its foliage is feathery; 
its color is pretty; its form is neat. But, 
oh — what deadly conventionality ! 

When I stand by the long row of per- 
fectly well-planted, well-grown, and well- 
flowered cosmos, I am always reminded 
of those rows and rows of new and dainty 
suburban houses; with their fresh cur- 
tains and tamely clipped lawns and polite 
porches; with their hygienically screened 
perambulators carefully wheeled into the 
shade; and with their young mistresses — 
in fnodest and yet stylish uniformity of 
costume — issuing forth to meet their 
husbands, arriving from town on the five 
o'clock train. As a matter of fact, they 
are sweet and charming — these amiable 
young couples. It is only because their 
type is so precisely and endlessly re- 



86 A GARDEN ROSARY 

peated that one wearies of them. Perhaps 
if the cosmos would develop some trifling 
variation of size or color or form, one 
would feel a warmer interest in its af- 
fairs. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 87 



August 21 

y mother loves best the pink 
Killarney rosey and long he- 
\fore my day had a row of them 
in the big vegetable garden, where they 
associated with potatoes and corn with 
the natural friendliness that always dis- 
tinguishes real ladies in humble sur- 
roundings. And, indeed, what more ex- 
quisite product of nature's idealism and 
man's cooperation than this exquisite 
blossom, with its fine flesh and lines, 
graceful without finickiness 7 There is a 
strength and endurance about the Kil- 
larney for all its delicacy. Doubtless it is 
this sweet and vigorous unaffectiveness 
that makes this rose dear to those who 
have, lived long enough to divine the worth 
of simplicity. 




88 A GARDEN ROSARY 



August 23 

he gladioli have hurst forth 
\from their obscurity by the 

barberry hedge, unexpectedly, 
like gawky English school-girls who have 
been unnoticed while they were growing 
taller and taller. 

I have always thought it a painjul 
custom arbitrarily to thrust suddenly ma- 
tured little girls into full-grown society 
the moment they reach a certain age, and 
expect them to take a comfortable and 
gracious place in it. My ''debutantes'' 
leaped into bright-lipped maturity with 
equal unpreparedness, but I have found 
it necessary to tie them up very severely 
and trim their scraggliness into shape 
before I consider them presentable. For in 
spite of their gorgeous complexions they 
are very awkward and lanky, and have 
not grasped the first principles of po- 
lite and well-poised carriage. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 89 



August 2'] 

rose early this morning and 
surreptitiously gathered a hig 
bouquet of flowers to take to the 
hospital, whither my mother and I must 
go for a brief sojourn. Hoping to beguile 
and surprise this dearest of friends, I care- 
fully chose one blossom — sometimes more 
— from every flowering plant. I picked 
them with extreme discrimination, and put 
them in a cool, dark place — well up to 
their necks in water — until time for the 
journey; like an anxious parent, prepar- 
ing her little flock for a visit to the great city. 
They bore the tedious journey well, al- 
though they got a little tired before they 
came to the end, hidden, as they were, 
under the seat. But after I had untied 
their 'wrappings and placed them with a 
flourish in the various vases against the 
tranquil gray wall of the hospital room, 
they perked up their heads and looked 
around, like inquisitive youngsters to my 
mother's great surprise and delight. But 



90 A GARDEN ROSARY 

alas — after the first hour the city air de- 
pressed them. Naughty, selfish children 

— who would not make an effort — they 
hung their country heads and sulked I The 
cosmos gasped for breath; the coreopsis 
wrinkled up her clear forehead in irri- 
tation and boredom; the larkspur was so 
frightened that it grew pale. Even the 
bachelor's button, who certainly cannot 
plead fragility or temperamentality, be- 
came limp. The phlox got a dirty face; 
the poppies screwed their eyes shut; the 
nasturtium tore her dress; the verbena slid 
down into the water; the gaillardia refused 
to smile; the balsam jumped out of her car- 
riage and disappeared — goodness knows 
where; and the rose, — like a weak, spoiled 
darling, — merely because she was a lit- 
tle fatigued, dropped everything wearily 

— including her petals. 

In vain I clipped and changed the 
water and rearranged them. They fretted 
and moped, and stood about with their 
petticoats sagging and their hats over one 
ear, until I was thoroughly out of patience 
with them. Finally, like an exasperated 



A GARDEN ROSARY 91 

parent whose contrary offspring do the 
very things she was hoping they would not 
do, I scolded them loudly. But they only 
wriggled down into the water more dis- 
consolately than ever. As though this were 
not humiliating enough, at this moment 
the florist's hoy needs must enter with a 
sheaf of magnificent gladioli — all pink 
and fresh and crisp. Sophisticated, aris- 
tocratic, well inured to city life and tem- 
perature, how they towered disdainfully 
above my peevish, slouching brood — who 
are more accustomed to having their bare 
feet in the country dirt and their faces 
buffeted by salt winds than to being orna- 
ments in a city hospital. 

What a whimsical triviality it all was ! 
And yet — for one terrible instant a cold 
hand pressed on my heart when I saw how 
powerless I was to confer even this pass- 
ing pleasure upon the one I love . . . 
when I saw my children — whom I my- 
self had reared — obvious of their oppor- 
tunity of giving joy to one whose joys 
may be — alas — ah, alas — could it be 
possible, — too briefly numbered. 




92 A GARDEN ROSARY 



August 30 

e have been away for several 
days, and I find havoc on my 
return. The entire garden has 
taken advantage of my absence to mis- 
behave. The impatiens has lost all her 
flowers: the phlox has nt washed her face 
or blown her nose since I went, and is 
dirty as a pig. The candytuft and the 
mignonette look as if they had been off 
on a tour of dissipation, and the asters 
— tidy older sisters on whom I bank 
to maintain order — have fallen morbid 
victims to the black beetle. The wily tiger 
lily has doffed her smart clothes and 
stands forth in black-spotted ugliness; 
the hollyhock has degenerated into a fat 
middle-aged pallor; the lazy poppies 
have given up blooming, and the morning- 
glories have raided the place. They are 
literally strangling everything to death, 
and laughing, like dainty blue-throated 
fiends as they do it. It really is too dis- 
couraging. Certainly children are a great 
nuisance and a doubtful consolation. 




a garden rosary 93 

August 31 

he has come, the dear good 
clematis — with her white mob 
cap and ample white apron, 
and her clean, wholesome mantle of fra- 
grance. She is covering up the discrep- 
ancies of the naughty flowers and the 
idle plants, and is spreading her kind 
flowering personality everywhere — per- 
vasive, ge?itle, venerable. With a sigh of 
gratitude I am giving the care of the floral 
household over to her for a few days. 




94 A GARDEN ROSARY 



September 4 

y neat conventional suburb — 
the cosmos community — has 
slid, with shocking rapidity ^ 
down the social scale. To-day I found 
that the trim conventional settlement of a 
short while ago had become completely 
demoralized — as neighborhoods in a city 
undergo swift and inexplicable trans- 
formations. The dainty background of 
green is getting shabby and brownish: 
the fair-faced young brides who blossomed 
forth so sweetly have become enormous y 
short-limbed, old dowagers, slightly yel- 
lowed with age; the young ladies who were 
so pink and trig have grown into spindly j 
sharp-colored spinsters. The younger gen- 
eration is meager. No one has bothered 
to clear up the street or even sweep the 
porches. I instituted myself a board of 
health and a property booster, and have 
been carting away the debris: straighten- 
ing out the tangle, and clearing things 
up generally. Matters had got to such a 



A GARDEN ROSARY 95 

pass that I doubt if it will ever he a really 
high-grade community again; hut, at any 
rate, I have saved it from complete dis- 
aster and am seeing to it that the young- 
sters get proper attention and a chance^ 
to grow up. 




96 A GARDEN ROSARY 



September 7 

have been looking over my so- 
cial register, deciding whom I 
shall invite to my garden party 
next year. I have kept a careful record: 
the lazy guests and the disagreeable ones 
shall not be asked another time. Space is 
too precious and time too valuable for any 
but the most responsive. 

Of course I shall keep the perennials: 
one always keeps them, unless they com- 
mit some unpardonable sin, just as one 
always asks one^s relatives to family fes- 
tivities. But as for the annuals — well 
— they are goi?ig to be carefully selected 
hereafter: I grow more exclusive in my 
floral aspirations. Of course I shall ask 
the poppies to come back: they have 
danced with such gayety — such delir- 
ious, frantic gayety all summer long, and 
worn such festive dresses. The nastur- 
tium, too, who is so obliging that we some- 
times forget her charm, and her Spanish 
grace of figure. The snapdragons have 



A GARDEN ROSARY 97 

been sullen and disagreeable and out 
they go. They shall not come back at my 
invitation. The bachelor's button can 
come if he wants, but I shan't take any 
special trouble to secure him. The salvia 
dressed too outrageously and quarreled 
with so many people that she must be 
banned. I am rather tired of the calen- 
dulas, too : in spite of their good nature they 
are clumsy, vulgar things. But I shall find 
a place for the little French ruffled mari- 
golds. I think I shall arrange a row for 
the meek-faced pansies. They are stupid, 
and I have never asked them yet. But I 
feel rather guilty about it, and think I 
had better try them this once. The bal- 
sam has been so freaky that I shall give 
her a years vacation. The mignonette 
and the lemon verbena shall have quiet 
seats of honor. The zinnias have re- 
sponded so gratefully to my courtesies 
that they shall be invited; and the petmtias 
— who did n't arrive in time this year — 
will be given another chance. The asters, 
too, will be invited en masse, and the 
gladioli must have a bed to themselves. 



98 A GARDEN ROSARY 

There are a few newcomers I want to en- 
tertain next season: some Chinese prim- 
roses and some nicotianas. 

Thus I plan, although my mother, 
whose long experience has made her kind- 
er in her hospitality, warns me that such 
exclusiveness may lead to poverty: that 
when spring is actually upon me, she will 
see me rush out into the highways and 
byways and drag in all the old good-na- 
tured standhys I have so snobbishly dis- 
carded. But whatever humbleness I may 
be forced to, at least I am planning for 
a subdued and handsome display next 
year, with dignified line and color and 
proper relays of guests, so that there will 
be no gaps or overcrowding. 

Dreams, dreams, already dreams of 
next year, while the guests of this year's 
reception have not yet departed! 



A GARDEN ROSARY 



99 



September 8 




he only sin of which a flower is 
capable is to lose its beauty. 



ICX) A GARDEN ROSARY 



September 9 

utting a garden bed to rights 
these days is like sweeping 
and garnishing a house from 
which one is soon to move away. It hardly 
seems worth while, and yet the family 
must he fed and put to bed and dressed 
in the morning, even if food and bed- 
clothes are soon to be packed away for 
the winter. 





A GARDEN ROSARY lOI 



September io 

ear tinctures one's vision as a 
drop of ink stains a whole ba- 
sin of clear water. As a flock 
of butterflies, which has been fluttering 
over a field, flees before a sudden cold wind, 
so my dancing flowers seem, to my fear- 
sick eyes, to be affrighted by the strange 
shadow that is creeping — creeping — 
every day resistlessly nearer — over my 
sky. Has the chill of the fear — the icy 
dread — that has griped my heart, af- 
fected them ? As I gaze at them through the 
endless vista of agony that my imagina- 
tion has swiftly built for me, they seem 
frozen on their stems — ''stricken dumb 
with a sense of that to come,'' 



I02 A GARDEN ROSARY 



September ii 

cannot tend the flowers. The 
shadow of the vultures of fear 
lies between me and my garden. 

I am conscious only of the heavy flapping 

of strange wings. 





A GARDEN ROSARY 103 



September 13 

hey have plunged their beaks 
into my flesh at last . . . these 
evil birds of prey. We cannot 
stay here any longer: we must go away 
together y my mother and I. As I wander 
hack and forth, waiting for the train that 
will take us away, I see the little question- 
ing faces of my flowers turned toward me. 
But I cannot speak to them. I am envel- 
oped in a heavy haze through which I 
cmmot beat my way. 




I04 A GARDEN ROSARY 



September 14 

have left the garden on the hilU 
side, a?id now sit all day long 
beside the supreme flower of 
Nature's creation — the Rose of all the 
World. Like the other roses, her name- 
sakes, she has bloomed with sitch superb 
fullness that even those who love her best 
cannot think of greater completion of 
any human personality. And now — the 
long brilliant season drawing to a close, 
she, like them, is fading — soon to van- 
ish from the weary stalk that has sus- 
tained her so bravely and so gayly through 
the storm and sunshine of her time. 



A GARDEN ROSARY 



105 



September 17 

he terror is leaving me. This 
separation which seemed so 
incredible and violent assumes 
hut dignified garb of natural 
The vultures are wheeling out of 
sight. When Reality takes our hand the 
fear bred of Imagination dissolves. 




the sad 
change. 



I06 A GARDEN ROSARY 



September i8 

oldenrod is burnishing the fields 
on every hand. It knows no- 
thing of the strange change that 
has come across our lives. Oh, wise and 
beautiful provision ! We should not want 
the triumphant march of Autumn to 
pause, or be for a moment darkened by 
the shadow of our individual grief. 





A GARDEN ROSARY 107 



September 23 

or the first time since we went 
away together, I left her to- 
day and journeyed hack the 
long, long way to the garden on the hill- 
side that she loved. I found them waiting 
for me — the flowers — like hushed, af- 
frighted children — and I told them, in 
the language that they understand, that I 
was going to take them to see her once 
again. 

With extreme care I selected the choic- 
est blooms of those flowers that she loves 
best. One of every kind, and here and 
there an extra one for love. They seemed 
to sense the impending calamity as they 
lifted their faces meekly for my plucking. 
Slowly, slowly I gathered them — through 
a bitter gush of tears, and laid them with 
sad gentleness in the big boxes. I carried 
them in my arms to the station, and all 
the long way back I clasped them close. 
Mute messengers to the one I hold most 
dear of all my earthly loves. Ah — mute- 
ness is the only speech on such a journey. 




I08 A GARDEN ROSARY 



September 24 

he loves them all — and with 
her dear weak fingers turns each 
Jittle flowering face to hers. 
What thoughts are passing through her 
mind as she looks at these bright blossoms ? 
I shall not know — until the day when I 
lie as she is lying now^ with all the world 
receding from me, forever. In that strange 
evening y my heart shall hold communion 
with the thoughts that now are hers — 
and which she seems to share more inti- 
mately with the flowers than with any 
mortal. Already her communication has 
taken on a finer vesture than that of 
speech. Although she talks to us quite 
freely — yet something has been whis- 
pered in her ear in too pure, too high a 
key for our gross senses to catch. And 
she does not tell us what it was. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 109 



September 26 

hey are coming to see her every 
day — the lazy posies who 
were so naughty on their first 
visit to the hospital. Meekly they present 
themselves before her now — eager to re- 
trieve their past misdemeanors. Calen- 
dulas, nasturtiums, mignonettes, — all 
the pretty garden children, cluster thickly 
about her bed and smile at her. Do they 
know — / wonder — as she puts out her 
thin hand — the pretty hand that has so 
often scattered seeds and so rarely plucked 
the blossoms — that they are gazing at her 
for the last time? And is that why their 
smile, like hers, is so brilliant and so 
strangely beautiful? 




no A GARDEN ROSARY 



September 28 

hen there is nothing that can he 
said; when words fail, and 
hands drop useless, and the 
feet that would so gladly run stand idle — 
then we poor human beings, in the ex- 
tremity of our grief, turn to flowers. We 
send them to the sick-room where we may 
not go ourselves. People who have almost^ 
forgotten that there is such a thing as a 
flower, suddenly recall, in the time of 
their affliction, this noiseless messenger 
who can best carry their greeting to the one 
about whom their thoughts are circling. 

Thus, through our little community and 
about our house there is silence. People 
meeting on the street look sorrowfully up 
at the drawn curtains in one bedroom win- 
dow. They cannot speak for the tears in 
their throats. But every day and all day 
they send communications through a me- 
dium more vocal than any other. Tall 
gladioli come; roses with dew on them; 
even the fringed gentian has left its shy 



A GARDEN ROSARY in 

haunt to bring a gentle salutation from the 
outer world. 

And she, whose gayety was always akin 
to the gayety of flowers — she understands 
— understands with the directness of one 
who has been close to nature in all its 
forms, and whose senses are now exquis- 
itely refined by suffering. 




112 A GARDEN ROSARY 



September 29 

appy visitors as well as stately 
ones come to the sick-room 
these days: petunias standing 
jocularly in a basket of ripe tomatoes; 
red dahlias, russet apples — a pumpkin, 
even, with an orange ribbon about its neck; 
and all the rest of the sturdy autumn crew. 
And why not ? It is our last chance to be 
gay together as well as our last chance to 
weep. And surely laughter is a truer trib- 
ute to her than tears. A sense of joy rather 
than of mourning must always be part of 
our remembrance of her. She does not 
want whispering nor doleful looks in her 
presence. She loves to hear the sounds 
of cheerful family life below stairs. One 
knows she would not want long streamers 
of crepe to flutter at her passing, nor ''let 
their laughter cease, remembering me,'' 



A GARDEN ROSARY I13 



October i 

he woodbine has flattened itself 
out against the window and 
made a perfect tracery against 
the pane. I see her eyes resting on it often 
with a glow of pleasure. Its fine bright 
color and its nicety of outline make it as 
beautiful as any Japanese etching on a 
piece of transparent parchment. 





114 A GARDEN ROSARY 



October 2 

he doorbell rang this morning 
and I ran down to find at the 
front steps a group of children 
from the kindergarten — bringing with 
them nasturtiums of their own planting 
and gathering in a basket of their own 
making. Although she was asleep I wak- 
ened her. Friendly sleep will claim her 
all too soon — for a time longer and an 
oblivion kinder than we can gauge with 
our poor instruments. To-day we will 
beg a little more of her precious presence. 
I led the children in — ten of them — 
and they stood about her bed in awed 
silence, their flowers in their hands. What 
did they see, those wondering midgets? 
Only the vague impression of a sick lady, 
lying in a wide white bed — looking at 
them with eyes large, blue and mystically 
piercing. And what did she see ? I think 
she saw in those small faces the earnest of 
perpetual youth — perpetual progress — 
of life going on; of seeds coming into 



A GARDEN ROSARY 115 

flower; of harvests bringing forth fruit; 
the repetition of the cycle, forever. 

Her 'psychic gaze traveled from little 
face to little face. She asked their names 
and nodded as she saw in these minia- 
tures resemblances to father or grand- 
father she had known. And then, as her 
eyes fell upon the bright splash of color 
in the basket, they filled with gleaming 
tears. Flowers too — going on — coming 
into blossom — seed-time and maturity 
— going on — on — life going on ... I 
think this is what she saw. 




Il6 A GARDEN ROSARY 



October 3 

watch the daily dissolution 
of a human body is to read in 
unforgettable letters the history 
of all physical life. There is only the dif- 
ference of degree between death as it 
steals over a mortal frame and death as it 
withers a flower on its stem. But no. The 
flowers die painlessly. For us, the tear- 
ing down of our tissues and the wasting 
away of our flesh is full of agony. Surely 
the unfathomable thing that makes us dif- 
ferent from the animals and the flowers 
and all other creations of Nature must be 
responsible for this difference. How else 
can we account for pain as we know it, 
and as the vegetable world knows it not ? 
But why should not our superior endow- 
ment make us immune to the ultimate 
pangs, instead of rendering us more sus- 
ceptible to them ? 




a garden rosary i17 

October 4 

utumn! — with the harvest be- 
ing gathered into the hams, and 
with the flowers which are the 
handsomest of all the year standing bright- 
ly in their garden beds! What more fit- 
ting time to be gathered to rest, after a full 
season of fruitf nines s ? As she lies upon 
her bed, and sees standing before her the 
five stalwart men and women she has 
borne, there is something in her counte- 
nance that reminds me of a majestic field 
from which an ample harvest has been 
taken. 

In such primitive moments as these, 
we feel our kinship to the natural beasts 
and the prolific meadows: and surely 
earthly life is most easily relinquished 
when we have satisfied the laws of earth. 
I feel, as she lies here, with the autumn 
pastures stretching out on every hand, 
that she, like them, is content, nor does 
she ''envy the field its fatherhood.'' 




Il8 A GARDEN ROSARY 



October 5 

stood by the window to-day and 
watched them digging up the 
gladioli bulbs and stowing them 
away for the winter. With all the au- 
tumn foliage fading fast^ and even the 
gladioli vanishing^ I like to remember 
the pretty Japanese custom of taking 
down pictures after they have delighted 
the spectators for a certain period, rolling 
them up and putting them away, until 
the season returns when it shall be proper 
to rehang them: an unconscious homage 
to the beautiful law of recurrence. 




A GARDEN ROSARY II9 



October 6 

went riding to-day down the 
splendid aisles of autumn car- 
pets and autumn banners. I 
saw them all: the apples on the trees; the 
pumpkins against the hams; the salvia 
and cosmos in the garden beds; and the 
*' happy autumn fields'' on every side. 
But they spoke nothing to me. My heart 
was full of grief because she could not see 
it, too. What comfort to believe that she 
— like the sleeping children '' saw fairer 
in her dreams.'' I longed, intensely, 
with strong human longing, for her eyes 
to rest with mine, at that very moment, 
on those special sights. Alas — what 
longing shall be in the future, when, on 
returning home, I cannot even speak to 
her of what I have seen and heard ! 



I20 A GARDEN ROSARY 



October 8 

hey have sent her a Killarney 
from the garden on the distant 
hillside J and I have placed it 
in a tall glass vase beside her bed. Ah — 
strange times, when even this pale, fragile 
thing may outlive her who planted it! 





A GARDEN ROSARY 121 



October 9 

ate this afternoon, as I sat in 
the sick-room, I remembered 
this night a year ago. We 
thought there was going to he a frost, and 
hastily running out into the twilight, we 
gathered a great basketful of flowers. 
How bright and hardy they looked — a 
great tumbled pile of them. Never was 
the larkspur bluer or the pink rambler 
roses pinker than then. Lavender cam- 
panulas; heliotrope breathing out a last 
intense fragrance; cosmos, bland-faced 
and mild; bachelor's buttons almost ill- 
temperedly blue, Down in the lower gar- 
den a single Killarney bared her bosom 
to the moon like some fair society girl en 
decolletee, glowing into pink in a chilly 
drawing-room. Honeysuckle — remem- 
brancer of summer — clung on the lattice 
of the porch. The calendulas — sturdy 
bourgeoisies — hardly noticed the com- 
ing cold. And, tight and impervious, the 
French marigolds ruffled their little 



122 A GARDEN ROSARY 

orange-colored collars about their faces ^ 
and prepared for a siege. What we could 
not gather we covered, hoping to save them 
for '' one more day'* . . . *' one more day,'' 
she said, although we knew they must go 
soon. 

One more day — to-night — / whisper 
it to myself, knowing now, as then, that 
this flower must, like those other flowers, 
go soon , . , so soon. 



A GARDEN ROSARY 123 



October io 

othing hut roses have been sent 
to her on this last day of all 
\her earthly days. Rich and fine 
with their perfume and their subtle, fleet- 
ing color, they are indeed her flowers. 
They are standing — oh, so still in that 
still room. Their fragrance is their prayer. 





124 A GARDEN ROSARY 



October 12 

e have brought her hack to the 
place she loved the best, and 
placed her on the hillside, over- 
looking the lily pond and the garden, 
under the protection of a giant oak, whose 
immemorial branches make a shelter 
above her head. 

There is a path that leads from the 
door step y over which she welcomed so 
many friends ^ to the very spot where she 
lies, and along this path will always 
bloom flowers. The friendly grasses will 
whisper over her, and the sky will spread 
a canopy not too vast for that ample spirit. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 125 



October 14 

cannot imagine how she can he 
getting on without me. ''She is 
in heaven,'' saintly folk, upon 
whose aged faces sorrow has furrowed 
infinite and softening traces, assure me, 
with trembling voices. But even if she he, 
how she must miss, every hour, and 
cruelly, the ministrations that only I 
could give. And if she is lying under the 
oak tree on the hillside, she must be 
lonely, for all the flowers they strewed 
upon the path and laid above her are 
withered by now. I cannot go to her. Nay, 
even if I went, and stretched myself up- 
on the grave and called aloud to her, she 
would not answer. She, who always 
heard my softest whisper, who would un- 
derstand my thought before I uttered it — 
now answers nothing, and never will 
again. ... ''Ah, light of mine eyes, 
what gift shall I send thee? What gift to 
that other world? The apple rots, and 
the quince decay eth, and one by one they 



126 A GARDEN ROSARY 

perish, the petals of the rose. I send thee 
my tears, hound up in a napkin, and 
what though the napkin hums, if my 
tears reach thee at last?'' 




A GARDEN ROSARY 127 



October i8 

here is something unanswerable 
in sheer physical emptiness. 
I see the great rough hole from 
which some master tree was torn, and I 
stand before it, appalled. Time will heal 
the gaping void; earth will sift down into 
it; grass will find a foothold; even violets 
may grow there. And let us agree, for 
comfort's sake, that the wood is already 
being brought into a nobler use. But do 
those assurances assuage the suffering 
soil, exposed to the stark elements? 

Wounds mend; something comes into 
daily life or life attaches itself elsewhere^ 
. . . True. But until then . . , ? 




128 A GARDEN ROSARY 



October 20 

5 / walked across the meadows 
this evening, the wild carrot, 
dying of chill, caught at my 
skirt with myriad skinny fingers. Like 
withered old ladies, hugging their dingy 
lace around them, they shivered in the 
hreeze. I stood in their trembling midst, 
and it seemed to me that I saw the figure 
of Mrs. Skewton as I used to imagine her 
in my childhood days — lean and eager, 
clutching with feeble insistence at that 
proud daughter of hers — Edith Dombey. 
She who, passing by iridifferently, paused 
for a moment in her imperious career, 
irritated and yet touched by the pathetic, 
despicable appeal of unlovely old age. 

So sometimes, when I see the wrinkled 
faces of those whose days go on with slow, 
dull pulse, and think of the sparkle and 
bravery of her who had so much to give, 
depression saps my faith. 




A GARDEN ROSARY 129 



October 25 

here is comfort in the mere com- 
pletion of any course. The ten- 
der bluets, dotting the spring 
pastures and trampled in the mud hy care- 
less feet, are pitiable. The rose eaten by 
a worm is horrible. The storm which 
beats the breath from a gasping flower, or 
an accident which cuts it down in bud, or 
a blight which poisons it — these are 
tragedies. But how can we, creatures of 
Nature and part of her irrevocable scheme, 
rebel when one who had flowered bril- 
liantly and scattered its seeds with 
generosity, reaching the end of its season, 
faded gently from our sight? 




I30 A GARDEN ROSARY 



October 2^] 

late Killarney rose — the flower 
that she loved best — has blos- 
somed beside the doorstep. I 
cut it, and holding it in my hand, exam- 
ined the smooth texture and delicate 
fashioning of the petals. What a master- 
piece of evolution I We, for all our tedious 
experiments and struggling with the 
sciences, can never imitate nor even ex- 
plain this innocent mystery. Whatever 
we know or believe, it is evident beyond 
question that some supreme Power regu- 
lates the development of even this one rose. 
It comes to bud and blossom in the time 
appointed for it. It adheres to the line 
and color of those Killarneys that have 
gone before it. There is some law govern- 
ing this flower — this trifling transient 
blossom. The same Power that is immense 
enough to control the course of the stars 
and planets is also gauged fine enough to 
guard the life of a rose. How shall we, 
with our puny intellects and our frantic 



A GARDEN ROSARY 131 

emotions, dare to say that the same Power 
does not order the course of every human 
life, in the way most rightful and inevit- 
able? 




132 a garden rosary 

November i 

0-day I have gone out and 
planted bulbs for spring. I 
drove my fingers into the earth, 
— that same earth that now encircles her 
and will for evermore, — and pressed in 
the hard dry buds that, by the miracle of 
Nature, will bring forth in the spring cro- 
cuses, scilla, and daffodils. 

Yes, even with those white curtained 
windows looking down upon me, — win- 
dows that open into what will be for me, 
as long as I live, an empty room, — / 
planted bulbs for another springtime — 
for another springtime. . . . 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



